Adios 2012

posted at 6:31 pm on December 30, 2012 by Jazz Shaw

New Years isn’t until Tuesday, but being “the weekend guy” this will likely be my final post of 2012 here. And as in years past, I’d hoped to share a few thoughts on what was clearly not the best year in history (at least from a political perspective).

Yeah… that whole election thing didn’t turn out very well. The employment situation was pretty dismal, with far too many of you either out of work, worried about keeping your jobs or seeing little in the way of improvement in your personal economic situations. The Pentagon is getting ready for more than 800,000 rolling layoffs. Countries around the world were embroiled in turmoil which continues to this day, leading to great uncertainty about the future. Our government shows absolutely no signs of doing anything productive to stop our slide into economic decline, either in the short term or the long term. A drought wiped out most of the corn crop and Mother Nature totally kicked out butts in a couple of places. If that wasn’t enough, Ed and I had to deal with the performance of both the Steelers and the Jets.

But even for all that, as James Tiberius Kirk once said while stranded in the heart of a dead asteroid, I always like to think there are possibilities. The general consensus seems to be that the US economy will slowly improve over the next few years… not because of the policies of Barack Obama, but in spite of them. We should all hope this is true, as we could certainly use some good news. There is also an assumption out there that these improvements will only go to benefit the Democrats in both the mid-terms and the next presidential election. I’m not so sure about that one. Even in defeat, the election did manage to spur a great national conversation about the economy, tax policy, growth and regulation. I, for one, think that form of forced education was worth all the effort and even the losses. Smarter people vote smarter, and continued voter education programs will still result in the election of representatives who are willing to do the hard work required for the nation’s future.

Or so I would wish.

We are a resilient people and a resilient nation. We always have been. Prospects for our future economic security may look fairly dismal at the moment, but these things tend to unfold in cycles. America always finds a way to fight its way back when we look like we’re down for the count. The only question is how far down we’ll have to go before that happens, but I still have to believe that it will. And with that positive thought, I’d like to thank all of you who spend time with us here at Hot Air week after week and participate in the discussion. We may not always see eye to eye, but it’s a refreshing chance to hash out the issues of the day and take part in the Great Experiment. And none of it would happen without you, so you have my gratitude. Happy New Year to all of you and may 2013 find us with fair winds and following seas.